Close…but no Cheeseburger

Actually, better than close – Georges and Nils made it to the summit of North Timpanogos. I was lollygagging a bit behind these two speedsters. But alas, we didn’t bring along Cheeseburgers, or any other Summit Cheeseburger-approved sandwich. It just goes to show you kids – be prepared because you might end up on a summit.

On what was surely the last weekend of the year for a sustained snow climb in the Wasatch mountains we ventured to the Timpanogos Complex to climb the Cold Fusion Couloir. Remember when cold fusion was going to solve the world’s energy needs? Here’s a update – it’s a crock. But the Cold Fusion Couloir is definitely the real deal. We started out near the Timpanokee Campground Trailhead, but instead of heading towards South Timpanogos, we headed along a Forest Service jeep trail towards the bottom of the couloir. Along the way we passed enormous piles of avalanche debris, evidence of the power of the slides coming off the flanks of North Timpanogos.

The beginning of the couloir is understated, a small weed-choked ditch just off the service road. But in the next mile the couloir opens up and the trail ascends over 3,000 feet, reaching an inclination of up to 50 degrees. The views were tremendous – check out our photos on our Flickr site by clicking on a photo below. We’ve posted 50 pictures here. Along the summit ridge, Georges and Nils encountered a convention of lady bugs, took a look down the Grunge Couloir and finally gained the summit. Check out the great views of South Timpanogos!

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“Remember when cold fusion was going to solve the world’s energy needs? Here’s a update – it’s a crock.”

That is incorrect. Cold fusion was replicated in hundreds of world-class laboratories, and these replications were published in mainstream, peer-reviewed scientific journals. Over 3,500 papers have been published on this subject. I suggest you review the experimental literature before commenting on it. You will find a list of papers and 500 full text papers here:

Thanks for weighing in. I’m no physicist but my limited reading of the literature leaves me unconvinced that this phenomenon is real. Call me a skeptic. I’ll mull it over more next time I’m on a mountaintop eating a Cheeseburger.

“I’m no physicist but my limited reading of the literature leaves me unconvinced that this phenomenon is real. Call me a skeptic.”

I am not sure if I should call you a skeptic or not. How limited is your reading? Have you read one or two papers, or 20 or 30? What do you think of the results published by SRI, Los Alamos or Mitsubishi? Have you found errors in these papers?

If you have not read their papers yet, but you believe they must be wrong, then you are not a skeptic. A skeptic reserves judgment. He does not take sides or jump to a conclusion about a subject he has not carefully studied. A skeptic questions the arguments that have been made against cold fusion, as well as those made in favor of it.

Let me make a guess here. My guess is that you were making a flippant comment — a mere joke, and you had no idea that Mitsubishi spent $20 million replicating cold fusion, together with Japanese National Synchrotron laboratory. There is no harm in making jokes. If I knew nothing about cold fusion, I might joke about it as well. But I think you should stop joking now.

I am sure you meant no harm, but jokes about cold fusion, and the widespread, unthinking dismissal of the subject have caused harm. Cold fusion is often attacked, most recently in the Washington Post, Time magazine, and by a U.S. Congressman who is trying to enhance his own reputation by destroying the reputation and career of an honest scientist who published a positive result. That is no joke. (See http://lenr-canr.org/News.htm) Dozens of cold fusion researchers have had their careers cut short by this kind of persecution. The late Nobel laureate Julian Schwinger described the attacks against his cold fusion papers: “The pressure for conformity is enormous. I have experienced it in editors’ rejection of submitted papers, based on venomous criticism of anonymous referees. The replacement of impartial reviewing by censorship will be the death of science.” (http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/SchwingerJcoldfusiona.pdf)

These attacks are not caused a conspiracy or anything like that. They are made by ignorant people who feel free to attack research just to make a joke, or to make political capital.

I must also register my concern over your unthinking attacks upon cold fusion. This is the same type of vituperative yellow journalism that has sullied the esteemed field of time travel. Most recently cold fusion and time travel were both played for cheap laughs in Back to the Future Part II, where the Mr. Cold Fusion Home Energy Reactor was mounted on a DeLorean and used to generate the electricity necessary to break the bounds of time. Anyone who has read recent credible scientific journals on cold fusion or time travel knows that this premise is completely ludicrous. Time travel is based upon thought beams not electricity and cold fusion requires a rubber bucket.

I also agree that Sir Loin of Beef is clearly misinformed. As Steve put so aptly at http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/06/separation-of-information-and-security.html ““But my internal beliefs about the world are not yoked to the official truth. I am privately free in my thoughts.” I think the real question is not about cold fusion, but rather the so-called “real” fusion that is not only erroneously used to explain how the sun works but is actually being pursued as an energy source here on earth! How can we get energy from the fantasies of crackpot scientists? As many informed contributors to the world wide web have accurately stated, “we really don’t know how the sun works.” (reference – just about every website!) Well, we don’t how cold fusion works either, but that doesn’t make it any less real!